


Today I met the boy I'm gonna marry

by lockmyheart



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Weddings, all the canon things basically but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21770095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lockmyheart/pseuds/lockmyheart
Summary: Ian Gallagher has been in and out of Mickey's life for a long time now.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 8
Kudos: 150





	Today I met the boy I'm gonna marry

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one of my Nanowrimo one-shots. I edited it, but I'm still not sure how coherent it is. 
> 
> I'm ignoring the "first meeting" from the season 10 promo, by the way. I wrote this before that video was released, and I didn't like it anyway.
> 
> Title from the song by Darlene Love, but the work isn't inspired by the song outside of said title.

Mickey sends the ball flying through the air with all the force he can muster. It’s a great throw, and it’s not his fault some little twerp puts his face in the way. The ball smacks into the kid and sends him crashing into the mud. He starts bawling right away, like Mickey fucking shot him or something. 

Mickey stands on the middle of the pitch, arms hanging limply by his side, and pouts as the entire team and the coach rush to the boy’s side. It was an _awesome_ throw, he thinks to himself. 

No one was going to care now, because that idiot didn’t know how to move. 

The coach turns and sends Mickey an icy cold stare. He points off the pitch. “Milkovich, bench!” 

The unfairness of it all boils inside of Mickey. “It’s not my fault he got in the way!” he yells, and to his horror hears that he’s on the verge of crying. Why can’t he ever get mad without crying? He breathes quick and fast through his mouth. 

It had been a great throw. He has never thrown that far before. 

“Bench!”

“Fuck you!” Mickey’s shaking all over. He stomps away, sniffing hard. First, no one ever comes to his games. Not even his mom, who promised him she would. Every time she promised but she’s never seen a single game or even a single practice. Then, he gets blamed for something he didn’t do on purpose. 

Mickey wipes his face with his sleeve. Before he reaches the bench, he stops. An idea forms in his head. He doesn’t think about it, he just does it. He drops his shorts and he pisses, right there on the field. That’s what they get. 

“Milkovich!” The coach is coming at him now and Mickey quickly tucks himself back into his boxers and hoists the shorts up. The coach is coming towards him with quick, long steps. Mickey flinches a little, but he keeps his head up high as he coach towers above him. He thinks he’s about to be hit. “What did you do that for?”

Mickey shrugs. He’s boiling hot and he’s a little scared now on top of it all. He doesn’t know why he did that, but he’s so angry he’s crying again. “Fuck you,” he hisses, his voice breaking. “I didn’t do it!”

“You didn’t what, pee on the field?”

Mickey kicks the coach in the shin. He just does it, he has to get rid of the anger somehow and kicking feels good. 

The coach grabs his arm. It hurts. Mickey kicks at him again. “Let me go!” He’s full on screaming now. His heart beats frantically in his chest. It hurts. “Fuck you!”

“Calm the fuck down!” 

Mickey flinches. He kicks again. He can’t see, he can’t breathe. He needs to run. 

The coach is still holding his arm. His fingers dig into his bones. He crouches down and they’re eye level, but Mickey doesn’t look at him. He’s tearing at his arm, punching the coach’s arm with his free hand. He’s half aware of the rest of the team staring, but he can’t stop. He needs to get away. 

“Mikhailo.” Mickey hates his name. He hits harder. The coach grabs his flailing fist and forces it down to the side. Mickey’s stuck. He’s stuck. The coach is so much stronger than him. Mickey can’t breathe, he’s gasping. “Mikhailo,” the coach says again. He sounds calmer now, but Mickey wants him to let go. His arm hurts. He kicks at him. His breathing is hysterical sobs now mixed with incoherent yelling. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“It hurts!” Mickey pulls at his arm. “Let me go!”

The coach loosens his grip, but he doesn’t let go. “Is everything alright at home, Mikhailo?” he speaks quietly. The team won’t hear. Mickey doesn’t look at him. He heaves for breath. 

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t swear at me.”

“Fuck you!”

The coach sighs. “I’m going to have to contact your parents about this.”

Mickey freezes. 

“You don’t want me to?”

Mickey shakes his head. He’s looking down, tears streaming down his face. He doesn’t know how he got here. 

“Why not?” 

His voice is so soft. No one ever speaks to Mickey softly. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He shrugs. Hiccups. 

“Is someone at home mean to you?”

Mickey shakes his head hard. He’s looking at the grass. 

The coach sighs again. He lets Mickey go, who immediately flies several steps backwards. 

“Do you have any friends, Mikhailo?”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want friends. Other kids are dumb. They don’t want to play with him and he doesn’t want to play with them either. 

“Why don’t you take a break, and when you come back we’ll do something fun, okay? We can all play a game.”

Mickey’s anger flares up again. “I’m not a _baby_ ,” he spits. Because the coach is talking to him all slow and calm like he is one.

“I didn’t say you were. We’ll play tag, it’s good for the team spirit.”

Mickey shakes his head. “I don’t wanna play anymore.”

The coach stands up. His dark eyes look sad. Mickey doesn’t like it, it makes him uncomfortable. “Mikhailo —”

“No!” Mickey balls his hands into fists. “I’m done with this stupid game, I never liked it anyway.”

“I can forget what happened today. Just take a break and when --”

“Good for you.” Mickey spins around and he runs. He runs as fast as his legs can carry him. 

~*~*~

His dad is drunk when Mickey gets home and tells Mickey to get him a beer from the fridge. Mickey does, quietly, and retreats to his room after. He doesn’t know where his mom is, but he hasn’t seen her in a few days. 

Later, when his dad has his friends over and they’re being weird and loud, Mandy comes crawling up into his bed. They hide under the covers together, and Mickey tries not to think about what happened on the field today. He doesn’t really know what happened, but he knows he wants to forget it and never see the coach again. 

Mandy falls asleep with her head on his pillow. He watches her breathe.

Mickey doesn’t sleep that night. 

~*~*~

Mickey’s not at school today. He pretended to go, but went the opposite direction as soon as his mother had retreated back inside. He doesn’t want to go to school, it’s boring and he’s too tired anyway. He can’t think when he’s tired. 

Mickey’s tired a lot. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going, he’s walking the streets holding a large stick he found in a ditch. He scares off a few cats with it and draws patters onto the ground as he walks. 

“Hello.”

He looks up and sees a boy sitting on the side of the road sporting a giant bruise on his jaw, spreading up his cheek, nearly reaching his eye. Mickey realizes it’s the boy he hit in the face with the ball. He scowls. “What do you want?” He’s not saying sorry. He’s not. 

“Why aren’t you in school?”

Mickey blinks. “I dunno,” he says. “Why aren’t you?”

“I dunno,” the boy echoes. “I forgot.” The bruise looks like it hurts. Mickey doesn’t feel bad. He doesn’t. The asshole got in the way. 

He pokes at the ground with his stick hard. “You forgot to go to school?”

The boy shrugs. “What’s your name? I forgot.”

Mickey looks around. He feels awkward. He’s trying not to look at the bruise that’s covering almost half the kid’s face. “You forget a lot of things.” He pauses, then says, quietly, “Mickey.” 

“I’m Ian.”

“Okay.” Mickey doesn’t know what to do with that information. He never bothered to remember any of his team mates’ names. They weren’t his friends. 

“I lost a tooth.” Ian pulls down his lower lip, showing Mickey a gap next to his lower front teeth. “Yesterday.”

“Oh.” Mickey wasn’t sorry.

“It had been lose for a while, but it came out. There was blood everywhere.”

“Oh.”

“It’s fine though!” The boy, Ian, smiles his toothless grin. Mickey shuffles on his feet. “It was real annoying, everyone told me to just pull it out but I didn’t wanna.”

“Okay.” Mickey picks at the end of the stick. 

“Did you quit the team?”

“Yeah. It was dumb anyway.”

“Oh, okay. I think it’s fun.”

“Good for you.” 

Mickey itches. He doesn’t want to talk to Ian but he also wants Ian to keep talking to him.

“How old are you?” Ian asks.

“Eight.”

Ian smiles. “I’m seven.” When Mickey doesn’t say anything, Ian continues. “Do you wanna play with me?”

Mickey scratches his head with his fingernails. He sniffs and shrugs, like he can take it or leave it. Something sparks up in his chest. “Maybe for a little while.”

Ian lights up. “I like your stick! I can find one too and we can have a sword fight?”

Mickey smiles, despite himself. “Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna win.”

“No way!” Ian gets up and runs into what Mickey assumes is his backyard. He comes back with a stick roughly the size of Mickey’s. “En garde!” He raises his arm and crouches down like he’s a damn ninja and Mickey laughs. 

He clangs his stick into Ian’s. 

They play until Ian’s siblings come home from school. Mickey still doesn’t know why Ian didn’t go. He has an older sister who is really pretty, and Mickey already knows Lip, because they’re in the same grade. Mickey kinda likes Lip, kinda doesn’t, he’s not sure. He’s annoying, but he’s also funny when he talks back to the teachers all smart-like. Mickey enjoys the looks on the teachers’ faces when he does it. 

He’s never really talked to Lip though, he doesn’t know how. He mostly sits in the back without saying anything. Sometimes he falls asleep. Sometimes he tries to pay attention but it’s like his brain falls out. He often just ends up drawing in his notebooks. 

“Why are you playing with Mickey Milkovich?” Lip says when he sees them and he wrinkles his nose like Mickey is dirt. Mickey looks down and a weird feeling shoots through him that feels bad and embarrassing. Like he shouldn’t be here. 

“Milkovich?” Ian’s sister, Fiona, turns and glares at him like she knows him. Mickey’s never said a word to her in his life and he doesn’t get why they hate him. He now knows that Ian is a Gallagher, and that his dad hates Frank Gallagher, who must be their dad, but Mickey hasn’t done anything to them. 

“Mickey’s my friend,” Ian says. He stands up tall, though he’s shorter than Mickey, and really tiny altogether. He’s got bright red hair and freckles all over his skin. Mickey likes it. 

“Mickey Milkovich is not your friend,” Fiona says and pulls Ian away from Mickey, like Mickey is a rabid dog. “Why didn’t you go to school today?”

Ian shrugs. “Didn’t wanna.”

“You can’t choose not to go to school, Ian.”

“Debbie and Carl don’t go to school.”

“Debbie and Carl are babies, don’t be dumb,” Lip sneers and knocks his shoulder into Mickey’s as he heads up the steps to their house. 

Mickey glares. He nearly cries again, but he won’t. He won’t. 

“Now you made Mickey sad!” Ian tears out of Fiona’s grip and steps towards Mickey, but Mickey backs away. 

“I don’t like you anyway,” he hisses. His chest hurts. “I don’t play with babies.” With that, he turns on his heel and runs. He crawls under the L bridge and sits there until it turns dark and scary homeless people start to gather there. A man with almost no teeth tell Mickey to come over to him. He doesn’t, he runs again.

He’s home way too late. He stands on he porch for several minutes as he works up the nerve to go inside. When he does, he opens the door as quietly as he can and slips inside. He’s halfway to his room when his dad spots him and yells at him from coming home late, for thinking he can come and go as he pleases.

Mickey doesn’t cry himself to sleep that night. 

He doesn’t. 

~*~*~

CPS came by again not long after that; Mickey hears his parents fighting about it in the living room after the lady has left. Someone sent the CPS people a message of concern, but his mother had worked her magic again and talked herself out of it. She screams at his dad that the kids need lunch money for school, or else people will start to wonder. His dad asks where they’re going to get that money.

Mickey’s glad, he thinks, that they weren’t taken away. He doesn’t want to get separated from his siblings. 

His dad calls his mom a whore. Mickey thinks he hits her. 

Her curls up in his bed and tries to sleep for a little while longer.

~*~*~

Mickey avoids Ian Gallagher as much as possible nowadays. He sees him around in the neighborhood and at school, when Mickey bothers to show up, but he doesn’t hang out with him again. Ian asks him, once or twice, to play with him, but Mickey tells him he would rather play with seven thousand slimy worms. 

He likes that insult and he feels good about it for the rest of the day. 

In the end, Ian stops approaching him, and Mickey tells himself that that’s what he wanted to happen. 

~*~*~

The next significant interaction Mickey has with Ian Gallagher, he’s almost thirteen and constantly on edge. He can’t explain why, but he just has so much rage inside of him, it’s like he can’t focus on anything else and any little thing can set him off. He’s almost been expelled twice for getting into fights, and he’s failing his classes because his attendance is shit. It’s whatever, he doesn’t care about passing anyway. 

Mickey’s fucked for life, he’s come to terms with that. 

School counselors have tried to talk to him but fuck if he’s going to let some wannabe shrink try to find things wrong with him. He’s fine, it’s other people who are fucking dumb. He doesn’t need school, he doesn’t know anyone who’s ever graduated. 

He hangs out with his older brothers and their friends and he smokes. It’s cool, it’s what you do. He feels grown up and far above the other losers who slave away for good grades or whatever the fuck. 

He almost walks right past it, because honestly, it’s none of his business who gets beat up alleys for doing dumb shit. But he ends up stopping without really knowing why. He glances into the alley, and sees Ian Gallagher being crowded into a corner by two guys several years older than both of them. 

“Give us your money,” one of them says and Mickey sees Ian shake his head. 

“I need it to buy a birthday present for my brother,” he says. He sounds brave when he says it, Mickey notices. He’s not looking down or shrinking into himself, he’s standing tall even though he’s almost two heads shorter than the teenagers threatening him. 

“Does it look like we care?” the other one spits. “Give it! Gary, grab him.” 

The bigger of the two grabs Ian’s arms while the other one shoves a hand down Ian’s pocket. 

Mickey sees red. He picks up a plank that’s leaning against the wall and sees to his satisfaction that it’s got two rusty nails sticking out of the end. He holds the plank over his head as he steps into the alley. He wants to look as brave as Ian does. “Get away from him!”

“What the —” Gary turns around and laughs when he sees Mickey. “Aw, is this your little boyfriend? How sweet.”

For some reason, that has Mickey fucking snapping. Before any of them can say anything else, he hits Gary across the back with the plank, nails first. 

“Aw, fuck!” Both guys jumps away from Ian and Mickey raises the plank again. He swings at them both and catches the other one in the knee. 

“Fucking psycho-ass kids!” They run away, swearing and yelling about how the hell they’re going to pay for that weed now. 

Mickey drops the plank, breathing hard. He lifts his eyes to meet Ian’s. He’s staring at Mickey with wide eyes. 

“Wow.” Ian smiles. “That was awesome.”

Mickey crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s whatever.”

“Thanks, Mickey.”

Mickey’s surprised Ian remembers his name. He’s glad. “Yeah, whatever. You’re fuckin’ lucky I was here.”

“Yeah.” Ian’s looking at him in a way that makes Mickey want to squirm. “I am.”

“Okay, anyway.” Mickey backs away. “Gotta go.”

“Mickey, wait.” Ian follows him out of the alley. Mickey vaguely remembers that day when they were kids. He remembers having fun. He remembers laughing. Playing for hours. He remembers crying himself to sleep when he got home. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m busy.”

Ian stops. He looks disappointed. “Oh, okay. Maybe some other time?”

“Yeah.” Mickey turns around to leave. “Maybe.” 

When he gets home he googles red hair on his laptop and scrolls through the pictures for half an hour. 

~*~*~

It’s not like Mickey _wants_ to fail all his classes, but that’s just how it is. When he was younger, like way younger, he used to like school. He got excited about homework, felt really grown-up doing it, but it didn’t take long before he couldn’t do it anymore. 

Now, Mickey barely goes to class, because when he does show up, he doesn’t get what the fuck they’re talking about because he’s missed so much. It’s not like anyone’s offered to help him catch up, so what’s he supposed to do? There are things he’d rather do than sit in a stuffy classroom and feel dumb for eight hours every day. 

He’s given up, it suits him just fine. He gets Lip Gallagher to do his essays for him every now and then, just so the school doesn’t kick him out. 

Sometimes Lip laughs at Mickey’s jokes and it makes Mickey feel good. 

Today he almost asked Lip to hang out, before he remembers that he hates Lip Gallagher. 

Mickey smokes outside the school and puts the cigarette out on his forearm. 

~*~*~

The first time Mickey gets well and truly wasted, he is almost fifteen. He’s been drinking beer since he was nine, but tonight he is so smashed he can’t even see straight and he has trouble walking. He’s had to sit down on the sidewalk. 

It’s not even fun, like Iggy promised him it would be. He’s nauseous, dizzy, and he can’t feel his own face. He bites down on his bottom lip until he tastes blood but he doesn’t feel pain. His teeth feel like they don’t belong in his mouth. 

He doesn’t know where Iggy is, where he went. Mickey’s still holding the bottle of vodka and he takes another sip, just to have something to do. 

Maybe he falls asleep like that, maybe he floats away. Suddenly someone’s tapping him on the shoulder. He raises his head, his vision is fucked up, he can’t focus. Someone’s talking to him, hoisting him upright. 

He says something, or tries to. Someone laughs, loud and girly, and then they’re walking. 

The next hour is nothing but a barely conscious blur. He’s lying down, but he’s not sleeping. He wants to be sleeping. He tries to say as much, but someone shushes him. He closes his mouth. Bites his tongue. 

He let’s it happen. 

~*~*~

Iggy calls Mickey a man the next morning. Finally you’re a man, he says, and claps Mickey on the back. She was 21, and Mickey should know how lucky he is.

Mickey’s vomited three times already, and he might once more. 

He smiles and high fives Iggy. 

He wonders why he’s not as excited about it as he knows he should be. He’s just nauseous and his hands won’t stop shaking. He doesn’t remember a single thing from the night before. 

He showers in boiling water for an hour. 

~*~*~

Mickey punches this kid, David Vasinski, in the face because Mickey can’t stop looking at him. 

After, he asks Karen Jackson out again.

~*~*~

Mickey is sixteen and he’s going to kill Ian Gallagher. Ian touched Mandy, she came to him crying, and Mickey doesn’t even think about what Ian was like as a kid, because Ian needs to die. 

No one hurts Mandy, not if Mickey can help it. He can’t always help it, but when he can, oh then he’s doing something about it. 

He never imagined Ian to be the kind of guy that forces himself onto girls, but there you go. Can’t trust no one anymore, not even the nice ones. 

He hunts him down, enjoying the cat and mouse chase. 

Ian Gallagher is a dead man. 

~*~*~

Mickey is sixteen and he can’t stop thinking about Ian Gallagher. They’d had sex two days ago and Mickey thinks of nothing else. All day, all night, he hasn’t been able to sleep. 

His thoughts alternate between ‘I can’t believe I fucking did something that stupid’ to ‘it needs to happen again right fucking now’. 

Mickey’s never been hornier in his life. If he thought he was a normal hormonal teenager before, pff, it’s gone fucking haywire since he slept with Ian. It awakened something in him that he can’t for the life of him satisfy by himself (and he’s tried). 

He needs it again, he realizes, after yet another unsatisfactory orgasm in his bedroom. That’s just a fact. 

It’s just sex. It doesn’t mean anything. So he likes it up the ass, so what? He’s googled it, and lots of straight guys take it up the ass from their girlfriends, either their fingers or strap-on dildos. It’s normal. Doesn’t mean you’re gay, all the websites reassured him of that before he scrubbed his internet history clean. 

It just means it’s easier to get Ian to do it than to find some girl willing to peg him. 

That’s it. 

~*~*~

Ian develops a crush on him. Mickey knows, he can tell. It’s not like Ian’s trying to hide it or be subtle about it. He looks at Mickey like no one’s ever looked at him before, like he’s actually worth looking at, worth talking to. 

Mickey’s addicted to Ian’s attention. It doesn’t even matter what kind of attention it is, as long as Ian’s focused on him. 

Mickey pushes him away, because he has to, but Ian doesn’t budge. He only comes closer whenever Mickey draws back, which is why Mickey feels safe to keep pretending to push him. 

~*~*~

The plan was never to fall for Ian, but it happened before Mickey even knew it was a possibility. When he realized, it was already too late. 

~*~*~

Usually when people tell Mickey to relax, he loses his shit. You don’t fucking tell him to relax, or even worse, to _calm down_. 

Today, Ian takes Mickey’s clenched fist and holds it. “Relax,” he murmurs. 

Mickey’s about to tell him to fuck off and mind his own business, but then their eyes meet. Ian looks tired, he’s only just managed to get out of bed after his depressive slump. Mickey’s so damn happy he’s up and walking. His fist unclenches and he tries to slow his breathing. 

Ian nods. The corner of his mouth curves upwards just a little. “Good.”

Their fingers intertwine and they stand there in the middle of the kitchen, holding hands and breathing together. 

Svetlana continues to rant in Russian in the background.

Mickey’s forgotten why he got mad in the first place. 

~*~*~

Mickey’s heart breaks again and again over the years, at the hands of Ian Gallagher. A few times he only has himself to blame. Other times, it’s all Ian. 

Mickey, without Ian, is lost at sea. Drifting with no purpose. He misses him like a limb when he’s gone, and the worst part is that he’s never sure if Ian misses him in the same way. Not anymore. 

Mickey always crawls back, even when Ian claims he’s moved on. 

Because Ian always takes him back. Even when he has “a boyfriend”. 

It’s what they do. 

~*~*~

In prison, Mickey goes back to kind of wanting to kill Ian Gallagher. He has never been more irritated with another human being in his life. 

But then they get these soft moments, where Ian looks at him with bright eyes and a gentle, smitten smile, like he can’t believe Mickey’s here. And Mickey relents, no matter how annoyed he is, and kisses him. 

~*~*~

Mickey’s twenty-five, almost twenty-six. When he was a teenager he never thought he would reach his mid-twenties, there was too much that could go wrong in his life. 

Mickey looks at Ian now and remembers a kid with brilliant red hair, a freckled face and a giant smile who asked Mickey to play with him. He remembers a teenager with a stern jaw, rolling eyes and teasing smirk, and falling so hard and so fast he couldn’t tell what was up or down. He remembers a troubled young adult and torn up hearts and broken promises.

Mickey smiles. He’s been smiling non-stop for weeks. 

Ian takes his hand. Squeezes. He smiles a little sheepishly, wordlessly telling Mickey he knows how cheesy this is. They might have gone a bit overboard, just a tad. 

All eyes are on them. 

_I do._

_I do._


End file.
